If you post the last seven digits of the VIN I can give you the BMW part number. You might as well check the price of the dealer.

I tried looking in TIS by just entering your make and year, and it acts like your car doesn't have an oil cooler. It's not mentioned in the Bentley manual or at bavauto.com, either. If you've seen your oil cooler with your own two eyes than ignore me, but I think you only found performance oil coolers because they are an aftermarket add-on only. I just went and looked on my 92 325is and I don't apear to have one, but mine is pre-VANOS.

Bimmerzone.com has it for $178.92, but it says it's an AT oil cooler. It doesn't look like the one on my E30. I'm assuming AT means automatic transmission, so this might or might not be what you're looking for.

Search for parts for an '88 325iX. That oil cooler has one hose in and one hose out. I usually use bimmerzone.com or bavauto.com. I don't know if the mounting points are there on the E36, but alot of parts are interchangable between the E30 and E36. I'll compare mine tomorrow to find out. I remember the two oil lines going to the oil cooler are pretty expensive for hoses, but you'll have to do some sort of modfication anyway so that you can put the oil cooler in line. There are many well documented examples out there of ways to do it, but I won't pretend to know how. Don't go with the first method that you see. There are multiple ways of doing it and each have their pros and cons.

Cool! thank you for the replies, My water pump broke about a month ago, So i have a new radiator/thermostat and water pump-
I do have a restricted exhaust at the moment, (Dead cat and smaller pipe going into Larger pipes) Ill ask around about the e30 ix's oil cooler and see if i can interchange them to an e36- thank you guys for the help, it is appreciated

Dude,
If your cat is "dead" meaning restricted, that is likely why your car is running hot, you also run the risk of cooking your exhaust valves... i suggest you fix the problem at the source rather than band aid a solution. Start at the begining, thermostat good? system bled correctly? radiator not blocked due to years of neglected coolant? The infamous green goo (BMW technical term as translated from the german by factor techs) due to hard water instead of distilled water being used with regular non BMW coolant causing nitrates to drop out of suspension and clog cooling system? Let me know if you still need help trouble shooting your hot running motor

I had a feeling a restricted exhaust could be the culprit.. Its been up in the air at the mechanics a few times for other reasons (oilchange) and we have spoken about the little detonation i get when the car is a hair past the 12 o'clock positionon the temp gauge, no one seemed to concerned with the exhaust condition so i did not think much of it, just figured Id get the cat replaced a bit before emmsions..

doh

I will remedy that this weekend, I will post the results.

an oilcooler was suggested to me by a friend who said his car ran noticably cooler after he had one placed on. I should have used my brain Doh.

I am going to try that sending two dollars to 6 people etc. as suggested by eatdust16... used